The
ancient world was incomprehensibly different from ours. And if you forget that, you'll get it wrong.

Rember
the Greek God Atlas
holding the Earth on his shoulder—only
we got that wrong, 'cause the Greek God Atlas didn't
hold the Earth. Atlas stood on the Earth and held up the "firmament" —the
solid dome of the sky.

We got it wrong because we reinterpreted their myth to fit our own
ideas. We got it wrong because the way we understand the universe is
way far different from how the ancients understood it, and we didn't
take the time to figure out how they saw things.

Christianity is an ancient religion. It comes from a culture that thought
the sky was a solid dome that needed holding up. You won't
ever understand the beginnings of Christianity until you understand
the ideas that formed the culture that formed the religion. If the history
of Christianity interests you, you'll have toget
over just lining up a few of their facts with your modern ideas. You'll
have to learn how the ancients saw the universe before you can see how
their myths and legends and religions fit in with their ideas about
how the world worked.

For women followers of the Goddess Cybele,
having sex with a stranger was
a holy sacrament.

The Romans would go to the mixed- sex public
baths completely naked.

For women followers of the Goddess Cybele, having
sex with a stranger at the temple was a religious
act—a sacrament!

And, get this, you read
in the ancient texts about a man, a follower of Dionysus, dedicating
a sacred penis to his mother-in-law! Go figure.

But
you should also understand that not only was ancient culture different
from ours, the way it was different was different from what
your modern ideas make you think. For example, you're maybe
thinking all this sex stuff I just listed was that way because the ancients
were wild uninhibited filthy minded dirty people. They weren't. In marriage
the wife's fidelity was not just a virtue, it was the expectation. Many
Roman baths separated men from women. Non-believers everwhere found
the Cybele sex business repulsive. And in general the "sex"
stuff on the list wasn't about sex, it was about the sacred miracle
of new life. Here's how we know...

Boner-Gods("ithy-phallic" Gods, if you're supping with the Queen.
Or maybe just chat about the weather. Also, remember not to pick your
nose.)

The
ancients didn't make statues of boner-Gods to worship sex. Then as now,
people didn't need statues for that.

The ancients made statues of boner-Gods as a way of worshiping
the sacred miracle of new life.

Diodorus of Sicily explains >>

They [the Egyptians]
have deified the goat, just as the Greeks are said
to have honored Priapus, because of the generative
member; for this animal has a very great propensity for copulation,
and it is fitting that honor be shown to that member of the body which
is the cause of generation, being, as it were, the
primal author of all animal life. And, in general, not only the
Egyptians but not a few other peoples
as well have in the rites they observe treated the male member as sacred,
on the ground that it is the cause of the generation of all creatures;
and the priests in Egypt who have inherited their priestly offices from
their fathers are initiated first into the mysteries of this god. And
both the Pans and the Satyrs, they say, are worshipped by men for the
same reason; and this is why most peoples set up in their sacred
places statues of them showing the phallus erect and resembling
a goat's in nature, since according to tradition this animal is most
efficient in copulation; consequently, by representing these creatures
in such fashion, the dedicants are returning thanks to them
for their own numerous offspring.

First there was the story of Atlas holding something
on his shoulder. We got that wrong, because we tried to fit the ancient
story in with modern planetary astronomy. Only, see, the ancients didn't
have our planetary astronomy. Turns out, to understand the
ancient Atlas story you've got to fit the story in to the ancients'
understanding of the shape of the universe, the solid dome of the sky
and what not. Otherwise you get it wrong.

Then there was all that sex action. We got that wrong
too. We tried to fit their holy rites into our humping and cumming view
of sex. The ancients understood sex as humping, sure, but unlike us
their religion revered sex's connection with the miracle of creation.
Turns out to understand the ancients' sacred penis of Dionysus you have
to fit the ritual in with the ancients' reverence for the splendiferous
miracle of new life. And we didn't do that. So we got it wrong. For
us sex is just humping. Now who's got the dirty filthy mind?

Ok fine. The Atlas thing is interesting-ish, and the sex stuff is weird,
but so what? Here's so what. Differences matter. And
here comes the big difference between us and the ancients
—between our ideas and their ideas—that you absolutely
must know if you hope to understand earliest Christianity.

Cause
and effectYou
and I know things happen on account of the laws of nature.
Things move, the sun crosses the sky, in accordance with the laws of
physics. Fire burns because of the laws of chemistry. Dice land according
to the laws of probability. Even if we're not sure exactly what the
laws of nature are, we are sure there are laws of nature, and
that the things that happen are caused by them. In our world every effect—every
thing that happens—has a mechanical, impersonal cause.

The
ancients' world didn't work like that. It couldn't
work like that, what with them not having the maths or the
measurements that lead people to discover laws of nature and all. What
they did have, like us, was the instinct to link cause with effect,
and effect with cause. Something moved? Then something must have moved
it. Something, or someone.

And now we've hit
the big difference between between their view of how the world works
and ours. Not having impersonal mechanical laws of nature
to explain cause and effect, the ancients invented invisible,
intelligent personalities to cause the sun to move, a fire
to burn, and dice to roll as they did. They invented the Gods. In fact
they invented a medley of god-beings:
great Gods, demi-Gods, God's messengers, demons, spirits, sprites, souls,
ghosts of the dead, and vague and ill defined purposeful personalities,
all causing the events people saw in day to day life.

As we go through
POCM, I'll show you not just that Christianity and Paganism
share ideas, I'll show you how their shared ideas—miracles,
prophesies, demons, virgin births, angels, magic dreams, even God and
heaven— all fit the ancients' primitive god-being centered
understanding of how the world worked.